New Industry Products

Microchip Technology Adds More Flash Memory To Digital Signal Controllers

November 28, 2007 by Jeff Shepard

Microchip Technology Inc. announced an expansion of its low pin count 16-bit Digital Signal Controller (DSC) portfolio with the addition of three dsPIC33F general purpose family members and three dsPIC33F Motor Control/Power Conversion Family DSCs, which offer increased memory options for a range of applications including smart sensor processing, advanced motor control, lighting and power inverters.

The new General Purpose DSCs feature 16 or 32 Kbytes of Flash memory with 28- or 44-pin packages and provide a pin- and code-compatible migration path for PIC24 microcontrollers. The devices also feature an on-chip Analog-to-Digital-Converter (ADC), with up to 1.1 Msps, and serial interfaces such as I2C™, SPI and UART. These DSCs are suitable for a variety of embedded applications where high performance and small footprint are key requirements.

The three dsPIC33F motor control family DSCs add a motor-control PWM with two independent clock sources for advanced motor control or inverter algorithms – as well as active power factor correction – using a single DSC. This on-chip PWM peripheral is also designed for power-conversion and lighting applications. They also include a quadrature encoder interface for sensor-based motor applications. The company claims that these devices provide an excellent platform for advanced motor control algorithms, such as Field-Oriented Control (FOC) – bringing what is described as the next level of high performance, low noise and power efficiency to motor control applications.

Both the General Purpose and Motor Control DSCs also feature Peripheral Pin Select, which allows designers to remap digital I/O to optimize board layout�¢ï¿½ï¿½enabling smaller boards, less noise and the use of a lower pin count DSC.

"The unique combination of 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, DSP capability, low cost, and the industry’s smallest DSC package creates powerful possibilities for today’s embedded designers to push their products a step ahead of their competition," said Sumit Mitra, VP of Microchip’s Digital Signal Controller Division. "We have developed a number of basic and advanced libraries to aid time to market and to permit DSP-enabled features to be added without full immersion in DSP technology."

The dsPIC33FJ32GP and dsPIC33FJ32MC families consist of three members each, which are all available today for general sampling and volume production with prices starting at $2.51 and $2.47 each, respectively, in 10,000-unit quantities. The dsPIC33FJ32GP202 and dsPIC33FJ32MC202 are available in 28-pin SDIP, SOIC and QFN packages. The dsPIC33FJ32GP204, dsPIC33FJ32MC204, dsPIC33FJ16GP304 and dsPIC33FJ16MC304 are all available in 44-pin TQFP and QFN packages.